Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-06-09
Chinese and Japanese Delicacies.


Chinese and Japanese Delicacies.
Walking through the Chinese mar
keith San Francisco, says writer in
Youths Companion, one sees some very
queer articles OF food offered for sale;
small pats of soft cheese vanished am
Der brown and stamped with Chinese
characters; well-peeled chestnuts,
with tiny slices of white cocoanut
wrapped in neat little cornucopias of
glossy cabbage leaf forty kinds of
dried nuts, fruits (whole or sliced),
roots, and barks.
Then there are living turtles and
frogs; fowls and fish, alive, freshly
dressed, and smoked or dried; meats
half cooked in the carcass; wreaths of
dried oysters strung on bamboo splints;
abalones, like black models for dolls
hats; shreds of white cuttlefish, and
host of other edible curiosities.
Astranger might suppose that they
were simple curiosities, like the ancient
sticks of barber-pole candy exhibited
in the windows of q country grocery,
Or like the ham deliberately decorated
with geometrical puzzles in jelly,-to
be admired, but on no account to be
carved Not at all. They are re.
garded as eatable, and are eaten.
In fact, the Chinese and japanese
eat everything that comes out Of the
sea. All the fishes are good to their
taste, and are caught with great skill.
seaweeds of several sort are sent far
into the interior, to be used in thick
ening soups, gravies, and buildings,
and are highly priced because they
give relishing flavor of salt, which is
a luxury beyond the reach of most
Chinese peasants.
This use of seaweed is almost iden-
teal with the very common use of
Irish moss by Americans in making
toothsome dishes. But, indeed, fishes
and seaweed are eaten the world over,
but surely no other people eat the tide
flat animals swallowed by the natives
of Yesso. For example, the most
simply organized of the class OF ami
mails to which shells belong are called
ascidians. They grow sometimes sim
gly, sometimes in clusters, and are
rooted immoyably to the sandy bot
tom, subsisting on what the currents
may bring to them.
In Japan there is an ascidian (Cyn-
thia) which is as large as ones fist.
1t has no shell whatever, and is gray.
fabby, tulip-shaped sac, supported on
a short stalk But in spite of its for
bidding appearance, the Japs pickle it
in vinegar and use it as food.
Another animal growing between
the high and low watermarks on the
japanese coast is mudworm called
ISABELLA. 1t occupies a hard, limy tube
of its own making, and gets its food,
when high tide comes up over its hid
ing place, by thrusting out head
bushy with tentacles, and sucking in
currents of water loaded with minute
particles of nutriment. Out of this
wriggling creature the shore people
make soup which is true vermicelli,
not paste imitation of little worms,
and it is said to, taste as badly as it
smells.
A better dish is. made from the soft
interior parts of the sea-urchin, o..
echimus, large numbers of which lurk
along the rocky shores of the japanese
archipelago and the coast of China.
[ have seen the Haidas and other
coast Indians of the Pacific shores of
British America devouring raw sea-
urchins with great gusto, crushing
them i'll their fists, sucking out the
orange-colored cluster of eggs, which
constitute the only edible part,
amounting to one or two tablespoon
fuls, and then throwing the horny case
aside. The minute eggs taste much
like oysters, and have been a favorite
food of the natives of the bleak coast
OF Alaska for ages.
On many of the islands of the AL
eutlan archipelago you may see spots
close by the beach where the grass is
al aW Aoticably greener and more
luxuriant than elsewhere When the
surface soil is removed at these spots
there IS found underneath a laver of
what seems to be @reenish sand over
lying the stony or clayey soil of the
rest Of the island.
1t Is not sand. however, bet the
powdered remnants OF sea eggs that
have been thrown undcrfoot dt~tng
unnumbered feasts. These heaps are
often two or three feet in thickness,
and cover several acres. They were
probably forming for more than one
| thousand Years, and throughout the
layer may be found some interesting
stone and bone relics of the race which
made them.